Soviet Third Guards Army

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The Soviet Third Guards Army was a field army of the Red Army that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II, notably in 1945.

The Third Guards Army, commanded by General V.N. Gordov, was part of the First Ukrainian Front led by Marshal Ivan Koniev in 1945. In the First Ukrainian Front's attack from the Neisse River into Saxony and the Brandenburg area, the Third Guards Army attacked north of Cottbus into the Spree River. Part of it also attacked Cottbus and captured it. However, the Third Guards Army did not head north into the southern suburbs of Berlin. Koniev had angled the Fifth Guards Army left towards Spremberg and the Third Guards Army to the right to force the German troops back into Cottbus. A few days after the great Soviet offensive of April 16, the Third Guards Army kept the pressure on the Germans around Cottbus.

Koniev was warned of the mass of German troops in the Spreewald. He expedited the 28th Army's advance that was intended to seal the gap between the Third Guards Army, effectively finishing off the Germans in the Cottbus area, and the Third Guards Tank Army. On April 25, when the First Belorussian Front was fighting the Battle of Berlin, the Third Guards Army was rushed into positions close to the Berlin-Dresden autobahn "to block all the forest roads leading from east to west." Gordov's troops chopped down tall pine trees to form tank barriers. However, the Third Guards Army did not manage to occupy the southern part of its sector, which meant that there was a gap between it and the 28th Army. However, that did not matter that much since German resistance in eastern Germany was now very limited, as the Ninth and Twelfth Armies were retreating towards the Elbe River, and resistance was limited to small pockets of concentration.